Pawns and Princes
by La Vik
Summary: In the power vacuum left by the downfall of Armando Barillo, another cartel leader seeks to gain control. Agent Sheldon Sands is given one final assignment: to make sure one vital piece of the puzzle - a woman named Aurelia Barillo - does not fall into the wrong hands. [SandsxOFC]
1. Chapter 1

_"Armando Barillo?"_

_"Muerto."_

_"Y Ajedrez?"_

_"Muerto tambien."_

Tomàs Herrera took a long drag from his cigar and let it set in a bit, shutting his eyes and exhaling. There had been _plans_. It had been promised that once all was over and done with, the Barillo and Herrera cartels would join forces in the president's _absence_. Now, those plans were run into the ground. However, years of close companionship with Barillo was comfort enough. Tomàs knew there was _one_ _more chance_. The laws of physics, in their own way, applied to money and power. It was not created or destroyed. It had to go somewhere. A smile settled on his dark, weathered face as he opened his eyes to look at his underling.

They would just need to bring _her_ to him. _Aurelia._

* * *

"Díaz, I can stay in a hotel," Aurelia Barillo insisted. Cristóbal Díaz was something of the twenty-five-year-old woman's bodyguard, and had been since she had been small – since Armando Barillo first sent her away to live in America, away from his activities. Aurelia was the younger, gentler Barillo daughter, and perhaps even worse, the product of Barillo's affair with an American woman who mysteriously disappeared – no doubt at the hands of his wife and the mother of his older daughter, Ajedrez. Aurelia was less severe, fairer in complexion, with long dark hair and full, deep pink lips set onto round features.

Armando showed surprising gentleness and concern when it came to _this_ daughter, never involving her in the family business and outright forbidding her to ask of it, despite the fact that it was blatantly clear that none of his dealings were anything good.

Aurelia had lived most of her life in the care of his father's trusted advisor, and Díaz in turn thought of the young woman – who, by nature, seemed much younger than her age because of her heavily sheltered life – as his daughter, in the absence of any children by blood.

Perhaps that was why Aurelia seemed only minimally shaken by the news of the passing of her father and sister – she had been hidden away from them for so long, speaking with her father only by phone, or on very brief, heavily guarded visits to his home near Culiácan_._

Díaz, however, seemed unusually squirmy as he looked over his shoulder in the car at Aurelia in the back seat. "We're going to be staying with a friend of your father's. Señor Herrera –"

"I don't want to stay long," she said adamantly, crossing her arms over herself and unintentionally rumpling the black dress she was meant to wear in mourning. "I want to say goodbye to Papa and Ajedrez and go home."

Díaz seemed pained at this statement, though he didn't let the young woman see. She wasn't even allowed to handle her own papers – that was _his_ job, for the precise reason that there were things that it was better for her not to know about. In all of their minds – probably even in her own – she was still a child. She wasn't yet ready to know what lay in store for her in Mexico.

* * *

"How's it feel, Sands?"

"Like you just skullfucked me and gave me a shit-ton of painkillers," the dark-haired man replied as he reached up to remove his own bandages from around his head. "So all in all, pretty fucking good."

In truth, he felt like shit, and he had every reason to. He had a pair of glass eyes – _ocular prosthetics_ – jammed into his face so he wouldn't look nearly so disturbing, and had been in the hospital for a week now. He was fucking _blind_. There wasn't really much else to say about how he felt.

"So, am I free to go now, Sorenson?"

"Cool it, _Sheldon_." The woman said, placing a hand on his shoulder and pushing him firmly back into bed as he tried to get up. "Do you realize how big of a mess you've made down here?"

"I thought that was why the C.I.A. put me _in_ this playpen," Sands replied with a smirk that nearly looked believable, considering now he had eyes, no matter how blank and empty they may have been. "The whole point was to put me somewhere that was a shitshow to begin with, because I'm _hard to handle_ –"

"And now you're going to help clean up the shitshow," Sorenson said coldly, adjusting her glasses on the crook of her nose. Sands simply smirked wider. He knew what Sorenson looked like from his time back in the States – tall for a woman, broad-shouldered, wore thick glasses and her hair in a bun. Real librarian type with no time for anyone's bullshit. That is, until you get her to bed – but that was an entirely different story. "We've just received intelligence that The Herrera cartel has sent for Barillo's daughter – not the one you killed –"

"I read the files. I know there's another one," Sands said, his smirk quickly dissipating – he didn't need to have the ability to see in order to know that Sorenson got some satisfaction out of shutting him up. "She's a kid."

"She was 21 when you started the Mexico assignment. 24 now." Sorenson said matter-of-factly. "Anyway, Herrera's called in favors to have her brought to him. Source says they're on their way right now."

"How nice."

"Your new assignment – and your _final _assignment," Sorenson said with a biting tone that caused a visible leap in Sands' eyebrows, "Is to get her out of the way of things until we clear up this mess with Herrera, get him into custody."

"Let me get this straight," Sands said, his jaw clenched. "My last assignment as an agent – after I gave up my fucking eyes to get the last job done – is to babysit little Princess Barillo while you take all the credit?"

"What we _realized_," Sorenson said sternly, "Is that maybe Mexico isn't the shitshow. Maybe _you're_ the shitshow. What we need from you is for you to take care of this – then we won't throw you in prison or send you the bill for all this medical care."

Sands sneered, but quickly turned it into a twisted smile. If this was going to be his last assignment, then fuck it all. He'd go out in style. "Brief me on the details so I can be on my way, Sorenson."

* * *

"Mi Dulce… I am so, so sorry for your loss."

Aurelia had been preoccupied staring around the main foyer of the Herrera estate – a verifiable mansion. While she had by no means lived in squalor all of her life, it was surreal to see herself what someone in her father's line of work was able to afford. She snapped to attention when Tomàs Herrera reached out and placed a hand comfortingly on her back, despite the fact that she didn't feel she necessarily needed comforting. She was sad, of course – but more than anything, she was confused why she did not feel as sad as she should.

"That means a lot to me," she said, wrapping the black cotton sweater she wore over her dress around her shoulders in spite of the heat. "Thank you."

"We are… _so _very glad you could come for the memorial service we are holding in honor of Armando and Ajedrez. My son, Anselmo will help you bring your things upstairs," Tomàs continued, gesturing for his tall, tan-skinned son, clad in a grey suit and sunglasses, to come forward and take Aurelia's bags. He was handsome, with sharp cheekbones and charming, dark eyes, but something about him, the way he stared at Aurelia, offset the fact that if she had met him back home, he would probably be precisely her type.

She muttered her thanks as she followed him up the grand staircase to the guest suite – a plush, lavish room covered in artwork and old cherry furniture, topped off with a four post bed.

"I hope you will be able to feel at home here," Anselmo said in heavily accented English. "And I hope… you feel inclined to stay longer than a day or so," he added with a charming smile, catching Aurelia's hand after she put her bag down, placing a chaste kiss on the soft skin around her knuckles.

He certainly wasn't an _American_ boy, she mused to herself. She chuckled a little bit and nodded. "_I'll think about it_," she said pointedly. Seemingly appeased by such an answer, he respectfully bowed out of the room, though not before shooting a wink in Aurelia's direction as he shut the door behind him.

Now, finally, she was alone – but what she expected to be a feeling of relief was anything but. Ever since news had come out over a week ago of her father's passing, Díaz and the other guards hardly left her alone anywhere, as though they were afraid of something – or someone finding her. She'd been pining for time to herself for the entire week, but now that she finally had it, the sick feeling of grief seemed to slowly seep into her mind. Her father, whom she rarely saw, and her sister who suddenly when they were young stopped wanting anything to do with her – both were gone, and there was no way anymore to make things better. She blinked back an uncomfortable pressure behind her dark eyes and shook her head.

They had not been a part of her life before, she reminded herself. What reason did they have to have an effect like this on it now?

* * *

_A/N_

_Hello again to all my readers! I have a feeling some of you might be a little bit miffed at me for failing to finish a lot of my other stories, and I'm extremely sorry for leaving you all hanging! But the mind of a writer wanders, what can I say?_

_Anyway, I've just finished nursing school and am enjoying my time off before taking my board exam, and in my spare time while I'm not studying, I came across the work of another FFN author, The Pirate Gypsy, and their work in the OUATIM genre in particular. Reading Rigging the Game and Risk inspired me to go into my box of old things and dig up a story I wrote and never posted years ago, when I first watched the movie. Right now, I'm working on rewriting it in my current writing style, which is, as expected, very different – I was about 15 or 16 when I first wrote it, and I'm about 24 now, and considering Aurelia, my protagonist, is around the same age, I think I can finally breathe some life into her._

_Anyway, I'm glad you were able to come across this story, and I hope you'll be able to stick with it – send me your positive vibes that I will be able to finish this rewrite! Cheers!_


	2. Chapter 2

Aurelia normally never considered herself an insomniac in any way – she was a night owl, granted, but she never had trouble falling asleep when she felt compelled to. It was fortunate that this was the case, as anyone else may have had some misgivings sleeping in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar house, in an unfamiliar country. But the guest bedroom in the Herrera estate was amazing, she conceded, and she had no misgivings about occupying it for the time being.

She did have misgivings, however, when she stirred in the middle of the night and smelled something very out of place wafting under the doorway.

Smoke.

She drew in a deep, gasping breath and stumbled out of bed, frantically looking around to decide if she wanted to climb out of a second-story window, or take her chances running _towards_ the fire. However, because she could make a decision either way, she felt a large sack slip over her head, and an arm wrap around her, dragging her to the door – someone had been in the room. She flailed and attempted to get free, but whoever had her was maintaining too strong of a hold. She tried to scream out for the only person she trusted to help her – Dìaz – but her voice was muffled by the bag over her head. Her captor seemed to be stumbling through the smoke as well, occasional bumping her or himself into pillars and walls until she finally felt the cool rush of wind on her bare shoulders when they made it outside. Wearing only the thin-strapped black cotton dress she'd arrived in and the pair of ballet flats she was too tired to take off, it felt cooler than it should have. Whoever was holding her seemed to be dragging her along wordlessly, despite her protests until, after what felt like it had to have been about half a mile, they came to a halt and the sack was pulled off of her head.

It was still dark out, but the glow from a lone street lamp illuminated her captor's face. He had somewhat long, dark hair – and he was wearing _sunglasses_. At night. Aurelia sneered and wrenched her hands away, looking back at the Herrera estate in flames.

"Who are you?" she hissed. "You burned their fucking house down!"

"_That_, dollface, is what you call distraction." He said in a calm voice that made her hackles raise immediately. "How else was I supposed to get you out of there without them seeing?"

_Smack!_

The palm of Aurelia's hand collided with the side of his face in an act that seemed to catch him by surprise, as it knocked his shades off with a clatter. Aurelia made to run off, but the man regained his composure too quickly. In seconds, he had a hand clasped around her wrist again, yanking her back towards him.

"If you run off, I'll have the cops hunt you down, and I don't think you want to seek refuge in a Mexican jail," he said smugly. "By the feel of your wimpy little wrist, you don't exactly seem like a sumo wrestler –"

"You couldn't send the cops after me!" Aurelia said, attempting to pry her wrist from his hold as he yanked her along down the roadside. "You have _glass eyes_, you can't see me! How the hell did you even get me out here?"

"Oh, I forgot. I'm supposed to give little speech right about now – Sorenson mentioned that," he said dismissively, reaching into the chest pocket of his dark blazer and presenting a badge. "Agent Sands, C.I.A. I tracked you darling daddy and sister for two fucking years. I've seen your entire file, Miss Barillo, and let me tell you – if I wanted to get the cops to track you down, I could tell them the exact weight that you probably shave a couple pounds off of when anyone asks, your height, your blood type, the scar on your nose from a stray Mexican firecracker…"

Aurelia froze. He _did_ know her – and if he was the one who had been tracking her family, he was the one who killed them too.

"I could track you down in a heartbeat, sugar, blind or not. So, let's play nicely, alright?" he said, flashing an incongruously chipper smile. Aurelia was struck dumb, and despite their situation, was dumbfounded enough to follow.

Agent Sands seemed to be muttering to himself as though counting something before abruptly turning back and looking at Aurelia. "This the motel?"

He had been counting _steps_.

"Yeah…" Aurelia said hesitantly, glancing around and realizing she had no idea where they were anymore. Only _he_ did. He let go of her wrist, and she wrapped her arms around her bare shoulders consciously. His hand clapped onto her shoulder and pushed her towards a room, opening the door and pushing her inside. "If you think you're going to… to _ravage_ me in a dirty Mexican motel –"

"I don't need to resort to _coercion,_ sugar, believe me," he smirked, pushing her further into the room so that she tripped a bit and landed on the bed with a grimace. He himself took a seat at the table by the door, groping around slightly until his hand closed on a bottle of whiskey, throwing it towards the bed, where it landed next to her. "Drink up and go the fuck to sleep. You're too flustered to understand what the hell is going on."

Perhaps it was the fact that he hadn't hurt her this entire time. Perhaps it was the fact that even though she didn't understand what was going on, she never really _had_ when it came to her father, or to Mexico. Whatever the reason, she obliged.

* * *

Aurelia stirred the next morning and gingerly opened her eyes, feeling around with her hands on the bed until she hit something – a _juice box_? She squinted slightly and realized that in the bed next to her was a banana, and a juice box of some kind. She wasn't entirely familiar with Mexican snacks or drinks, though perhaps she should have been. She was already seven years old when she left, after all.

"Don't tell me you're a picky eater," came Sands' voice from the chair he'd settled himself in the previous night. "That's breakfast."

"What'd you eat?"

"You're nosy."

"I know."

Sands picked up the stool he was sitting on and moved it closer to the bed so he could kick his feet up – as he got closer, Aurelia realized that he had picked up a new pair of sunglasses somewhere; she also noticed for someone that couldn't see a damn thing, he was fairly adept in getting around the room. Suddenly realizing also that all of these observations meant that she was _staring_, she quickly looked down, picking up the juice box and jabbing the attached straw inside. At the sound of the tiny _pop_ that accompanied her motion, Sands nodded.

"Alright. No hunger strike. You're more cooperative than I expected already," he smirked. "Now, to discuss the terms of our little partnership in this endeavor –"

"_Partnership?_" Aurelia nearly spat, her eyebrows leaping upward. "How are we _partners_? You just burned down the house I was staying in, and you _kidnapped _me!"

"And yet here we are, having a nice conversation over breakfast," he retorted smugly. "You're free to go if you like, sweetcheeks."

Aurelia scoffed, rolling her eyes. "Worst bluff I've ever heard. I'm spoiled, but I'm not an idiot," she admitted before caving and taking a sip from the juice box – she truly _was_ thirsty. "I walk out there, I get lost, and I'm dead meat anyway."

"Very astute, sugar, have you been here before?" he laughed, pretending to be surprised before showing genuine amusement at the huff of exasperation which escaped Aurelia's mouth. His laugh was quickly halted, however, when in his distraction, he let his guard down enough for him not to hear her movements until her palm collided with his cheek – this was now the _second_ time.

"_Bastard._"

"Again. Well-deserved," he conceded, raising a hand to rub his face absently – she certainly didn't hit very hard, though considering she had never had to lift a hand to defend herself in her life, he couldn't say he was surprised. "But the fact still stands that right now, you need me to keep you from getting passed around every barrio from here to Tijuana, and I have no qualms admitting that I need a thing or two from you," he said smoothly. Aurelia was momentarily astonished at how quickly Sands seemed able to string his thoughts together in a situation like this. She muttered her concession under her breath, so quietly that had Sands' hearing not become sharper since losing his sight, he might have missed it altogether. "So, the Sparknotes version of our situation –"

"Why don't I get to hear the whole thing?"

"Because," Sands retorted with a slight lilt of annoyance at being interrupted, "your spoiled little brain will only take so much information before you start sniffling and tuning out and getting emotional about something or other. So, Sparknotes item number one – you are _clearly_ Daddy's favorite –"

"_Was,_" she interrupted again, though this time seemed to be more because she had seen it garner a reaction the first time. "I have you to thank for that."

"You're welcome."

"I was being facetious."

"You're also being _obvious_. I know you're reaching for my gun," he said, calmly catching her wrist which, as he had figured, was slowly creeping towards the pistol tucked into his waistband as she tried to distract him. "You get a freebie because I think it's cute that you think you can get one past me, sugar. Now, if you'll let me continue…"

Aurelia yanked her hand away from him and, for lack of anything else to do with them, clasped her hands in her lap with a sour expression on her face.

"Ajedrez left quite a mess for everyone to clean up, not leaving a contingency plan for your dear father's little henchmen –"

"No." Aurelia said sternly. "You don't get to talk about my sister. You have no right."

"Oh. I've hit a _sore spot_," Sands said, his amused smile twisting into a smirk at the prospect of having the younger sister of the woman responsible for nothing short of ruining his life squirming in from of him. "Loving, dedicated big sister A.J. who you adored until she dropped you like cold shit, the instant she decided to become a cop –"

"If you know all of that, then you knew her. She must have talked about me, then," she said with a tiny glimmer of something in her voice that Sands was, admittedly, not entirely sure how to deal with. _Hope_.

"Nope," he said abruptly. "She never said a peep about you, sweetcheeks. I didn't even know who she _was_ until—" he gestured to his own face, and relished in the gasp that came from the young woman in front of him when she realized what he meant. "On paper – in _our_ files – you were the only Barillo daughter. She was the well-hidden pawn. Which is why she _hated you_."

Aurelia gulped. Ajedrez _hated _her? She knew that they had somehow, somewhere through the years grown apart – but the idea of being hated by her sister sent a squirm through her body, even more than the discovery that her sister had played a part in something as terrible as taking a man's eyes. What _was_ this?

"Anyway. I say that _you_ were obviously Daddy's favorite, because he sent you off to safety in the States rather than involving you in his extracurriculars –"

"What do you—"

"For fuck's sake, your father was the leader of a drug cartel, I had no idea I was gonna need to write you a whole prequel!" Sands snapped in exasperation – he heard a rustle of the sheets on the bed and realized he had made the girl flinch.

Ajedrez, she certainly was not.

"Look, you don't need to be _scared_ of me. You need to be scared of the people out there," Sands said, gesturing dismissively at the window that had its blinds shut so to keep anyone from seeing inside. "It is not my job to be _nice_ to you. It is my job to keep you _not dead_, and _not in the wrong hands_. I'm not going to hurt you."

The statement seemed to take a short while to sink in – for a minute, Sands tensed in preparation for her to get up and try to run after all, until he realized that she simply _wouldn't_. She had been raised like that old song about a bird in some kind of gold cage or something… she was used to being trapped. She didn't know any better. She was actually a little bit pathetic.

And something about being pathetic conjured the closest emotion Sands would feel to guilt.

"Alright." He continued, interpreting her silence as complacence. "Item number two, you are not a U.S. citizen. You've been hidden in the States all your life with doctored papers, and that's all been dug up. So, if you try to go back there on your own, you will still be dragged right back here to Mexico kicking and screaming –"

"Díaz explained that to me on the way here," Aurelia interrupted again. "Anselmo already said they were going to help me –"

"Anselmo _Herrera_," Sands said, raising his eyebrows questioningly. "I'll let you figure out how big of a lie that was on your own." He smirked a little. "But moving on. I can bring you back to States and save you the trouble of seeing just how wrong you are about Herrera, if _you_ help _me_."

"But how can you—"

"No skipping ahead on the agenda, sugar," he interrupted, holding a hand up, effectively silencing her. He grinned as he realized it had worked. "First, you will help me. I know you're a fancy little art major. Degree in _visual arts_," he said, the scoff in his voice not masked in the slightest. "So you're going to put your talent to good use. I've heard rave reviews about you." He reached behind him and groped around the table until his hands closed around the edge of a pad of paper and a pencil which he dropped onto Aurelia's lap. "Pick something in this room and draw it – nice and dark," he directed.

Slightly confused, Aurelia picked up the pencil. Sands nodded when he heard the sound of her pencil etching on the paper and leaned back calmly. In a couple of minutes, the sound stopped, and Sands felt her push against his hand with the pad of paper. Pulling it from her hands and laying it on his own lap, he ran his fingers over the dark lines, following the contours and angles with an expression of intense concentration. The absence of snark and derision on his face was probably what drew Aurelia's eyes to actually _look_ at him for the first time during this entire ordeal, a glance she maintained until he finally spoke up.

"It's a lamp," he said finally. "And it has flowers on it. Ugly ones – either that, or they greatly exaggerated your skill."

"They're hideous."

"Fantastic," he said, surprisingly not sarcastic in tone. "Now, right now, you and I are in Juarez. Cute little border town," he added, donning his smirk again in the knowledge that this cute little town was indeed a crime hub and no place for a girl like Aurelia who clearly knew very little about the world in general. "And these are not my stomping grounds. Nowhere we're going to be falls into the category of the grounds upon which I am accustomed to stomping. So, you're going to be my eyes. My scout, if you will."

Aurelia rolled her eyes a bit at how amused he seemed to be with himself, but grudgingly chuckled as she added, "So, I'm your six."

He grinned.

"Top Gun. Cute," he said, immediately catching the movie reference. "You may possibly even be tolerable to be around once the Stockholm Syndrome sets in."

"How are you getting me back to California?"

Before answering her question, Sands' smile morphed into an unsettling Cheshire Cat grin. "We're getting' hitched, sugar."

Fully expecting her reaction this time, Sands was prepared when her hand shot out to slap him again, catching her thin wrist in his hand and nearly closing his hand entirely around it. "On _paper_. No need to get all hot and bothered. It's a cover."

"They do interviews for this kind of thing. They'll think I'm some kind of mail order bride."

"I'm in the C.I. fucking-A. sweetcheeks, I can pull the strings."

Aurelia eyed the man in front of her warily. She was used to not having a choice about where she was meant to go, or who she was meant to be around, just as he had surmised, but this was different. Marriage was…

What was it?

Honestly, Aurelia wasn't entirely sure what to make of it. In a way, she agreed – it was just _paper_, and he clearly thought of it that way too. If it got her back home, what was the problem? But on the other hand, it was still… _marriage._

"This'll get me back home?" she asked hesitantly.

"Eventually, yes."

"And being married to you doesn't _mean_ anything? It won't interfere with my life?"

"I sure as hell won't let it interfere with _mine_," he said matter-of-factly. "We're relocating. You're borrowing a last name. It's business arrangement that is resolved once this mess with Herrera is cleared up."

"But I –"

"Don't understand why any of this is happening to you." Sands finished for her. "Or why you're involved at all. That's simple. See, I'm _usually_ the man behind the curtain. I orchestrate. I follow through. And I was doing a fucking _amazing_ job of it with Barillo until your sister came into the mix. Now, some very _bad_ people have set up their own dominoes, and you –" he raised his index finger, pointing directly at Aurelia. "—were the one little piece that they didn't place quite right. So, we – more specifically, I – need to spirit you away before they have a chance to reposition you and knock you down."

Aurelia gulped back a flood of nausea that seemed to have hit her over the course of his explanation, and she made a noise that was something like a whimper. Sands groaned a little, feeling more exasperated than sympathetic at this point at having to deal with her reaction, but managed to continue goading her.

"You're either a pawn for them, or you're a pawn for us." He said frankly, not willing to make her situation sound any more appealing than it really was – a rude awakening later on would probably just bite him in the ass, and he was pretty sure his cheeks were still sore from the last time. "You pick them, you're stuck in Mexico forever at their mercy. You pick us, and you get to go back to the good ol' U.S. of A."

The final statement seemed to be a turning point for the young woman, as her breaths steadied at that point. Sands knew he'd made the sale – he just needed to close. "So whose hand are you eating out of, little bird? The one that'll put you back in your cage, or the one that'll eventually set you free?"

He held out his hand and cocked his head questioningly. There was a moment of quiet until he felt her hand hesitantly close around his, shaking it with a shudder. Sands grinned disarmingly.

"Atta girl."


	3. Chapter 3

Aurelia felt more at ease when Sorenson arrived to verify that Sands had in fact picked up the right girl – has was, after all, blind, so one could never be too sure. It wasn't that she was particularly personable or comforting. She was actually one of the most severe women Aurelia had ever met, apart from Papa's wife and Ajedrez's mother. But Sorenson certainly didn't seem as off-kilter as Sands, and this was perhaps as close as she would get to having someone on her side in this situation.

That was how she felt, anyway, until Sorenson placed the papers in front of her and explained apologetically that it was a _marriage contract_ – Aurelia wasn't sure what she had expected. A Cracker Jack ring? A shoddy ceremony? Whatever she had expected, none of it happened. There were simply papers to be signed, and Sorenson insisted they would be filed where they needed to be. Something about the defeated expression on her face seemed to appeal to Sorenson's better nature, and she sat on the motel room bed next to the younger woman while Sands stepped out for a cigarette.

"It's temporary, and we'll be checking in on you," she said, giving her best effort to be comforting in some way. "Sands is going to look out for you – he's a dick but he knows how to do his job. Protecting _you_ is his job," she insisted.

"I want to go home," Aurelia said, wrapping her arms around herself and the dress she'd now been wearing for about two days. Barefoot, she pulled her legs up onto the bed.

"You'll get to, when it's safe."

At this point, it became evident that Aurelia simply didn't want to talk anymore. She turned her face away, her face scrunching into a frown. Understanding that a lot had happened that she needed to process, Sorenson graciously bowed out of the room.

"Get the girl some different clothes," Sorenson snapped at Sands on her way out. "I need to go back and take care of this –" she gently tapped the folder of papers on his chest after he put out his cigarette. "Do you think she'll be stable enough to work with you to get to the airfield?"

"We'll get there," Sands deadpanned. "She agreed."

"She's probably in there _crying_."

"How come?" Sand smirked, raising the eyebrows that framed his empty, unseeing eyes, obstructed from view by a pair of sunglasses. "I think I'm quite a catch."

"No girl wants to end up with a guy like you, I'd be sobbing too," Sorenson quipped. "I'm serious, Sands. Use your judgment. She needs to get back to the States in one piece and stay that way, or else you'll be the one to fry for it. Ta-ta."

Sands flipped her the bird with a wide grin as she hopped into her car and drove off. He reached backward for the door handle to the motel room – true to Sorenson's word, he heard a sniffle coming from the direction of the bed.

He got it. Truth be told, he _knew_ how people's emotions worked, even if he didn't particularly give two fucks about them. Women didn't want to hear the word _wedding_ and think business. They wanted to think about some schmuck down on one knee with a ring, some fancy event with flowers and a church – not a ballpoint pen and a motel room.

"Look, dollface, this is _nothing. _This is _work_," he said, pulling up his char in the same spot and propping up his feet next to her. Upon his arrival, he heard the sniffling stop, and figured she was at least listening. "You have no _matrimonial obligations_ – no cooking dinner, no ironing clothes, and certainly none of the fun stuff," he rattled off, sounding like he was actually amusing himself. "The deal is, you take that pad and paper and draw when I say draw. You play along. And then, we all get back to the States in one piece and ride out this mess, _capisce_?" Silence.

"Hell-_o?_"

Still no response.

""Marco?"

Now, he was finally met with a response, but not one of words. "Great," he muttered to himself. "She snores."

* * *

It took a good night's sleep before Aurelia could really wrap her head around her situation – she was legally married to a C.I.A. agent who was going to smuggle her back into the country she had lived in for practically her whole life. Her father was the leader of a _drug cartel_. Her sister whom she had grown up idolized for being a women of principle, a police office, a model of good behavior and work ethic, had gotten an innocent man's eyes ripped out of his face.

Well, she recanted, looking over at Sands, who had his feet kicked up on the bed again. Maybe innocent wasn't the appropriate word.

"You drive?"

The question caught Aurelia off guard – what did it matter? At her hesitation, Sands huffed – the innocent act, whether it was true or not, was genuinely grating on his nerves. He honestly wasn't sure he had the patience to deal with such an ingénue, if not for the fact that his career and his freedom were riding on her _not running away_.

"Unless you want to trust me behind the wheel," he added impatiently, tapping a finger on the side of his shades. "We need to get to the airfield and meet Sorenson by tomorrow night, where she'll fly us safely out of this country."

"We're in Juarez, why can't we just _drive_ back instead of doing all of this?" Aurelia asked sourly, her brow furrowing. "It would be faster."

"Oh right. We're going to drive right on through several government checkpoints to get back to California, at any of which Herrera could have paid someone off to _detain_ you. Of course. I should have come up with that plan. Do you want my job?" he ranted sardonically, pulling his badge from his pocket and holding it out towards her. The silence lingered for a moment until he shoved his badge back where it had come from and leaned – almost lurched – forward towards Aurelia.

"Look, dollface. You think I'm a dick, and that is quite frankly the smartest idea you've had in the entire time I've been so happily acquainted with you," he said shortly, though his tone still somehow came off as smooth – inappropriately calm, considering the attack behind his words. "I get it. You've always gotten everything your little heart desired from Daddy and Mr. Díaz – but now, you're going to need to do what I say, and you're going to have to do it whether you trust me or not."

"Sorenson said if I didn't stick around, you'd _fry for it_. I heard that," she deadpanned. "Is that why you're such a dick to me?"

"Wow, another gem of wisdom. Good one, princess."

Aurelia clenched her jaw – trying to reason to his better nature was pointless. Even if she didn't believe him, she knew that she'd been complacent for too long now and gotten too far into things to back out. They were technically _married_.

"I'll drive," she said. "But one question – where are we gonna get a car?"

"Cars are easy enough to find." Sands smirked before reaching onto the table again, groping around until he closed his fist around a flathead screwdriver, which he held out towards Aurelia. "I'm gonna teach _you_ how to be useful."

* * *

"I'm a criminal." Aurelia muttered to herself, pushing ninety on an empty desert road in the first car they happened to come across – a pine-green, nearly rusted-over station wagon. Sands sat in the passenger seat, leisurely taking drags from his cigarette, seemingly unaffected by Aurelia's state of near panic. "I got married to a man I don't know. I stole a car. I'm hopping a plane into the United States illegally, and… I think I'm going to vomit…"

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, sugar," Sands interrupted calmly. "Or else you're going to need to steal _two_ cars, because if you blow chunks in here, it'll be pretty rancid and I'm not putting up with it. I have standards," he added with a grin - and surprisingly, rather than garnering another few minutes of the young woman's ire, he heard a strange sound coming from the driver's seat. Laughter.

The heat must really have been getting to her.

"Just keep driving until you get to Rancho La Palotada – it's a straight shot, there's no way for you to get lost." Sands directed, gesturing forward despite the fact that he couldn't see anywhere they were going – it dawned on Aurelia that he must have been extremely confident that she was complying with his instructions, and that people were only that confident if they had the upper hand, were completely insane, or both. "And we knock out at the motel –"

"_What_ motel?"

"The only fucking motel in Rancho La Palotada, and you ask too many questions," he continued smoothly. "So, are you a Mexi-can? Or a Mexi-can't?"

"I'm a half-Mexi-_can_-do-whatever-the-fuck-I-want!" Aurelia retorted in annoyance at the ill-crafted attempt at a joke, which she didn't know that he had used before. "What kind of a question is that?"

At this, Sands only chuckled. So she _did _have some of the old Barillo fire to her – just without the spite or the aspirations of world domination. Maybe she would be tolerable after all.

* * *

Aurelia had assumed Sands' comment about Stockholm Syndrome was a joke, but after they had reached Rancho La Palotada and crashed for the evening, she found herself slightly – only _slightly_ – concerned about the fact that he still slept in a chair with his feet up on the bed. That must have been killer on the back.

But, she corrected herself, he had obviously already been through much worse.

That evening was the first instance that her mind seemed finally quiet enough to realize how deep into this shit she had gotten herself. Literally, up to her neck in it, she wagered. She had known all her life that whatever her father did for a living, he kept quiet about it with her. She had known that his father's wife never accepted her – Aurelia's mother, Catherine, had been Barillo's American _mistress_. Sure, it was messy. But she had never realized how messy it could possibly get. And Díaz_, _who she trusted above all others – he had played a part in dragging her here to Mexico, to a place she didn't belong, and involving her in things like cartels and gunfire and C.I.A. missions, when she was a twenty-four-year-old woman who had never lived on her own, never been without someone watching over her whether she liked it or not.

Usually, not.

She had thought she was doing something crazy, the times she would sneak out and try to live like a regular twenty-something while Díaz wasn't looking. She would get drunk, and Díaz would somehow always manage to get her home without any consequences. That had been crazy. That had been the most _danger_ she had ever been in – and now, she realized, she had never been in any real danger, until now. And now that she was finally in danger and needed protecting, when she needed to have someone like Díaz_,_ who she trusted, she had Sands instead.

But, why should she trust Sands at all? Suddenly struggling to come up with some sort of back-up – some sort of a way out – she reached into the nightstand and pulled out the free Bible they always left and ripped a page out. She had never been a religious kind of person, but she was sure that if he was watching, the Big Man upstairs would understand that desperate times called for desperate measures. Using the pencil that she had used to hold her hair in place after Sands had given it to her, she drew a picture of the car they had taken, made sure to draw the license plate clearly, and folded it with her signature on the outside. She tucked it into the frame of the window, hoping when they left in the morning, Díazor someone who could help her would find it. They had to be looking for her. They wouldn't just let her go like this.

She spent the remainder of the night mulling over thoughts of what exactly could happen now, and by the time the sun came up and Sands stirred, she had barely gotten two hours of sleep. Still, there was no choice. Still clad in the black dress she was wearing at the Herrera estate, she clambered back into the driver's seat, started the car with the flathead screwdriver rigged into the ignition, and gunned it down the road.

"You sneak a couple shots while I was sleeping, sweetcheeks?" Sands smirked, feeling the way Aurelia's driving seemed to be less steady than the previous day – a lot of sharp, sudden swerves away from the center, which suggested she was either drunk or dosing off. "I'd suggest taking a break if we didn't have a plane to catch."

"I'm fine." She said shortly, glad to know that at least he couldn't see how tightly she was gripping the wheel in order to keep herself stimulated enough to not _crash_. Without warning, she was jolted by the sound of blaring music – he had flicked on the stereo to a static-riddled station playing, as expected, music that Aurelia had never heard in her life.

"Just helping," he smirked, fluidly moving his seat backwards and propping his feet up on the dashboard. "I've gotta say, sugar, you have me _pleasantly_ surprised – I thought there'd be a lot more blubbering and a lot less –" he made a zooming sound and mimed with his hand the movement of the car blasting down the road. "You know. Considering the fact that –"

"That I'm a spoiled brat, and I get everything I want, I know," she interrupted – Sands frowned. He let her get away with doing that quite a few times, which was very unusual. Granted, she was all bark and no bite, and her bark was more of a _yip_, but that was beside the point.

_CRACK!_

Aurelia screamed and the car gave a sudden swerve as, with a bang, the side mirror on Sands' side has blown clean off. Reflexively, his hand closed on her shoulder and shoved Aurelia down in her seat as he sank down as well, reaching into his waistband for his gun.

"KEEP DRIVING!" he ordered as Aurelia gave a small whimper, clenching her eyes shut and continuing to pound the gas pedal, praying that the road just kept going straight. There was another loud bang – more gunfire – but this time, it came from their own car. Unable to tell what was going on, with her eyes shut, Aurelia could only surmise that Sands had fired back at whoever was following them – and he'd gotten a hit, as there was a loud crash behind them, followed by… _nothing_. Just the sound of their old green station wagon on the road again.

Maybe he could be counted on to protect her after all, she mused as his hand suddenly pulled her up again in her seat.

"Looks like Herrera isn't the only one who knows that Armando Barillo's daughter is in town," Sands commented calmly, as though nothing had happened. Aurelia looked at him in shock, which he didn't have the luxury of seeing, or else he would have been even more amused.

"They're – they were trying to shoot _me_?"

"Oh, no, they wanted to shoot me, make no mistake of it," Sands said matter-of-factly. "They want to do much more interesting things to you. I thought you caught onto that a couple motels back?" he snickered. Aurelia exhaled sharply through her nostrils and planted her gaze firmly back onto the road, not expecting that Sands wasn't done talking yet. "How _did_ they know?" he asked, all sense of amusement gone from his voice.

Aurelia frowned. Why was he asking her? He was the C.I.A. agent. Wasn't he supposed to be the one to know these things? But… it hit her. The drawing. Whoever else wanted to get their hands on her knew because of the drawing.

"I might have left something… at the motel," she said squeamishly, not looking away from the road. Sands, for once, was silent.

"You…" he began slowly. "Are an _idiot_. And if I didn't have so much at stake, I would throw you out of this car, right here in the middle of the fucking desert, and I would drive my blind ass _alone_ back to the States. But as it stands, the circumstance still remains that you need me and I need you – so if you don't want the next few weeks or months of your life to be _hell_," he paused. "Then you don't pull anymore stunts. No more trying to rescued from the mean ol' C.I.A. man, no more trying to get back to Mister Díaz, which by the way, I find very creepy. Can you dig it?"

Sands felt himself shudder when Aurelia, after a moment's pause, replied. "I can dig it."

There was a tense silence, during which Aurelia was practically holding her breath, until they reached and passed a small hill and a chain-link fence became visible in the distance – the airfield.

"I see it – there's a fence. And – I see the plane," Aurelia said in a shocked voice. "Oh my god. We're really –"

There was a loud screech and a jolt as suddenly, another car rammed them from behind. Aurelia screamed again and floored the gas pedal as best as she could – they were hit again, and Sands shoved her down in her seat a second time.

"The fence!" Aurelia whimpered, trying to warn Sands that they were coming close. "The fence is –"

"Yes, sugar, I _know_ there is a fucking fence!" Sands roared. "Keep your foot on the gas!"

The next few seconds happened so quickly, Aurelia could hardly keep track of what was going on, but she clenched her eyes shut as Sands' leg swooped over the center console, knocking her own out of the way and slamming down on the brakes while he reached over and gave the steering wheel a hard spin, then wrapped an arm around Aurelia. He practically yanked her out of place and had her pinned horizontally across the front seats with his own body as the car swerved with a shriek from the tires against the road. The car on their tail crashed into them with an audible crunch while their station wagon went rolling through the fence, careening to a halt.

Aurelia was fairly sure they had just _died. _Her heart was pounding, and she realized she had tears streaming down her face by now. Her entire body shook, and she gave a piteous whimper until she realized… the sound of the car behind them had stopped. They weren't being chased anymore. She felt a few small cuts on her forehead from the shattered glass they had left in their wake, and she was fairly sure that Sands had twisted her ankle when he'd pulled her from the seat… but they definitely were _not_ dead.

And… he was _definitely_ still on top of her. She opened her eyes hesitantly and saw that though his shades had come off in the scuffle, and he too seemed to have been cut a few times across his face, he was very much pleased with himself. Clearly, he was used to this kind of thing.

"And _that_," Sands stated with a smirk, his face discomfortingly close to hers, "Is how you end a car chase in style."

"Sands, you _motherfucker_! Are you both in there?!"

Sorenson's voice carried over, and Scout looked up to see the older woman yanking the mangled door off of the car, reaching in and pulling Sands out first and shoving him aside before more gently aiding Aurelia. Sorenson's hand closed around Aurelia's bare shoulders, and she felt the girl shaking, but other than that, she seemed none the worse for the wear. Satisfied that their prize had gotten out alive, she turned to Sands, who was nonchalantly brushing himself off.

"Can you not do _anything_ without leaving a mess?"

He simply smirked in response. Sorenson rolled her eyes and turned back to Aurelia. "I'm – I'm _very_ sorry. Are you alright?"

"I don't think you should apologize yet," Aurelia said in a high-pitched, dazed voice. "As long as I'm with _him_, this probably isn't the last time."

"She learns quick," Sands snickered, earning a glare from both women which he could not see. He didn't need to. He knew.

The three of them made their way across the abandoned air field to a small plane that was waiting for them. Sorenson pushed Sands towards the collapsible stairs on the side of the plane, a bit more harshly than she needed to. When she turned to help Aurelia, however, she noticed the girl's face had gone pale.

"I've never been on a plane before…" she said weakly.

"Well… you've had a lot of _firsts_ lately," Sorenson conceded. "And to be honest, this one is probably going to be the only one I can assure you is safe."

"You have a point," Aurelia nodded, allowing Sorenson to help her into the plane.


	4. Chapter 4

Sorenson admittedly felt concerned about Aurelia's capacity to handle everything that she'd been thrown into – as it turned out, even her first time on an airplane seemed to be more jarring of an experience than she could handle. The small jet had barely made it off the ground, and already, she looked like she was about to be sick. Sorenson offered the girl a bottle of water, but all she managed to do with it was twist the cap back and forth in the moments she wasn't clinging onto the sides of her seat.

"Give her some Jack, she usually falls asleep pretty fast," Sands said dismissively – Aurelia flinched, having assumed that he had fallen asleep in his own seat.

"He's being serious," Aurelia spoke up when she saw that Sorenson seemed about ready to chew him out again. "I want to sleep through this anyway."

Government-licensed jets, it turned out, were well-stocked. While she by no means was able to fall asleep after a few sips of Jack Daniels, Aurelia certainly at least felt a little less on edge – less aware of the cuts on her face, the swelling of her ankle, the fact that she was in dirty clothes, and tens of thousands of feet above the ground.

Pleasantly drowsy but still awake, Aurelia absently began humming to herself and wondering – how did Sands stay so calm through all of these things? He must have killed _tons_ of people before, she deduced. It probably came to him like brushing his teeth.

"Looks like we're flying over San Luis Obispo," Sorenson noted, thinking that Aurelia's absent stare was directed out the window when really, it wasn't directed anywhere at all.

"Oh. Well, that nice – _wait a minute_," Aurelia said, suddenly snapping to attention. "That's _past_ home! Where are you taking me?"

"We said we'd _get_ you home – but we can't do it right away. Too many people would know where to find you," Sorenson explained apologetically. "I know this should have been better explained to you in the first place, but our operation was _very_ pressed for time –"

"No, you told me I was _going home_ –"

"We had to get you away from Mexico – away from the border," Sorenson clarified. "We're setting you and Sands up in a safe-residence in San Francisco. It's away from the Mexican border, and immigration won't give you problems there."

"First I have to marry him, then I have to _live_ with him? No one told me about this!" Aurelia said shrilly.

"I told you, I needed your help, sugar," Sands spoke up. "You have a job to do for me, remember? Did you think I was offering you a telecommuting position?"

"You don't need to be _in_ the safe house at all times. You'll need to be careful, of course, but you're not a prisoner," Sorenson said, trying to soften the blow, though the idea of not being a prisoner in this situation elicited a roll of Aurelia's eyes.

"I want a phone," she said in a demanding voice, sounding truly _spoiled_ for the first time for the first time during this ordeal. "I want to speak with Díaz, he needs to know what's happening to me –"

"Have you not caught on that Díaz works for _Herrera_?" Sands interrupted. "He was probably sent by Herrera to infiltrate your father's cartel, and that's how he became your little babysitter. They've been setting you up for _years_, sugar."

The words seemed to echo in Aurelia's ears long enough to distract her for the rest of the flight, even for the choppy landing. She'd been played this whole time. Had it been silly to believe that they protected her for so long for her _own_ benefit? There were no more protests she could come up with as they hurriedly moved her and Sands from the plane into a car, and up Highway 280 until they pulled into a parking structure of a tall condominium building.

"You'll be staying here. Unit 11 on the twelfth floor," Sorenson said, pulling out a ring of keys and handing one each to both Aurelia and Sands. "One bedroom, but just to keep up appearances. You can deal with the sleeping arrangements as you see fit. It was purchased with my name on the deed so no one should be able to trace you here. It's… furnished, stocked, everything you need. And you," Sorenson said, looking at Aurelia with something in her eyes that looked a bit like pity, "are free to see the city, explore… but do not draw attention to yourself. There are clean clothes in the closet. You probably want to wash that dress by now –"

"I probably want to _burn_ it," Aurelia deadpanned in reply. "But… thank you."

Had it not been for a small excess of pride, Aurelia may have voiced the observation that the condominium they were set up in was, in fact, far above expectations. However, she was not willing to concede that perhaps she was not in as bad of a situation as she made herself out to be. This was still bad, she convinced herself as she walked through the furnished living room with Sands following behind her, following the sound of her footsteps no doubt. This was still not _home_, she insisted internally as she walked into the bedroom and made her way into the bathroom without so much as another word to Sands, who seemed busy enough trying to gain his bearings that he could leave her alone for a while.

It was only when Aurelia had slipped her dirty dress off of her shoulders, kicked off her shoes, and finally felt the tiny darts of hot water on her face, seeping into her hair that felt matted and heavy on her scalp, that she finally realized how _exhausted_ she felt. She leaned back against the cool tile of the shower stall and grimaced, finally acknowledging the sting of the water on the small cuts she had from their ordeal.

And next came the realization that Sands, as promised, had done his job in that car a few hours ago – he could easily have opened his door and jumped ship, leaving her to fend for herself. She wasn't yet convinced he was a good person, but he was a good agent… whatever that meant.

And Díaz.

The fact that the person who had been a father to her for most of her life had been simply preparing her to hand over to Herrera one day was still hard to accept – but there was no other explanation that seemed satisfactory. It made sense, but Aurelia didn't want it to.

After having washed off the past couple of days and mulled over her situation until her fingers were shriveled and pruney, Aurelia decided that there was one good thing about this situation – instead of being surrounded by Díaz and a ton of guards, she only had one. Sands.

Aurelia was slightly wary about stepping out of the bathroom in just a towel, and she peered out gingerly in case Sands was hanging around. Satisfied that her surroundings were clear, she used one hand to hold up her towel and made her way across the room to the closet.

Sorenson certainly didn't lie. Though the closet was _tiny_, half of it, at least, was filled with clothes that seemed about her size. She pulled out a pair of jeans - little large on the waist – and dark red sweater, slipping back on the ballet flats she'd been wearing despite the fact that they were a bit dusty and worn. She twisted her dark wet hair off to one side of her shoulder and opened the door to the living room, where Sands was standing silently in the kitchen area.

"All yours," she said hesitantly, suddenly aware of the fact that this was the first time in her life she would ever have to share a space with someone – and it certainly wasn't with the most agreeable of housemates.

"Oh. Oh, great!" Sands smirked, raising an eyebrow. "I'll just find it myself."

Aurelia's face reddened when it dawned on her that she'd been incredibly inconsiderate, especially considering the fact that she owed him her life. This place was just as unfamiliar to him as it was to her, and he couldn't even _see_ any of it. "It's… here, I can show you –"

"I'm fuckin' with you, sugar, I've got it covered," he snickered, pulling out a shiny black cane that had previously been tilted out of her sight. His sense of space, it seemed, was _impeccable_, as he was able to maneuver across the room and to the bedroom door, shutting it behind him. Letting out an exasperated groan, Aurelia sank into the couch next to her.

It was quiet, save for the sound of the shower in the other room turning on – but even that noise was muffled by the closed door. Instead, the clearest noise to reach Aurelia's ears was the vague sound of traffic outside, which drew her to the window out of curiosity.

San Francisco was _big_ city – a big city with more people than she could count, a maze of streets and cars and buildings and even some trees. Rather than the familiar smoggy haze of Los Angeles, San Francisco was blanketed with a cold coat of fog, punctured by dark evergreen trees and hills and towers. This was a completely strange place – a place she had nothing to do with, and that had nothing to do with her. Perhaps that's why it was the safest place they could think to keep her.

The absence of Sands' grating sarcasm made her feel, for the first time in days, totally alone, just like she had felt in the guest suite of the Herrera estate. But this solitude was something different, because she didn't feel like she was waiting for _someone _to tell her what to do next, or where she was meant to go – the only person who would have anything to say to her was Sands, and he'd already made it clear that he was just doing his job; he didn't have the slightest clue what they were meant to do to fill the empty time.

Aurelia glanced at the front door, then at the bedroom door that she knew stood between her and Sands. She noticed the sketch pad that had been left on the kitchen counter – it was technically hers, wasn't it? She'd done nothing wrong, so why should she feel confined here? Seeing no reason at all, she picked up the sketchpad and made her way back downstairs.

It wouldn't be a problem if she didn't go far, Aurelia figured. There was a small courtyard with a couple of benches out front, enough space for her to sit and familiarize herself with her new 'home' for the time being – perched with her legs crossed underneath her, she began sketching with the pad perched atop her knee.

"You're really good."

She jumped a little when she heard a voice over her shoulder and turned, locking eyes with a man about her own age, with handsome features slightly obscured by thick-rimmed glasses, though she couldn't tell if he wore them for necessity or show. He chuckled a little. "Sorry," he added. "Didn't mean to startle you while you were concentrating – I just noticed what you were doing and it's… really amazing. You're a great artist."

"Thanks," she said, enunciating the word slowly. The young man inclined his head towards the bench next to her, and she nodded, scooting over slightly and putting her pad and pencil aside for the time being.

"I'm Casey," he said, holding his hand in her direction.

Oh shit. Oh _shit_. Aurelia was quickly realizing that she had been hasty in leaving the apartment, as she didn't even know how much she was allowed to tell people. She had to make a decision. Fast. It was better to be safe than sorry, wasn't it? Think of something. Think of something.

"_Scout_," she replied quickly, reaching out and shaking Casey's hand. "I'm Scout."

"Like, in To Kill a Mockingbird. That's really cool," he beamed at her, and suddenly, Aurelia – _Scout_ felt quite smart for having thought of it. "Hey, do you run at all? Some friends and I are gonna try hiking Mission Peak this weekend, you should come!"

She blinked a few times – was this really happening? A few minutes out on her own and she was already being invited on things she had no idea about? A small smile settled onto the corners of her lips as she pondered the possibilities of this new situation – it didn't _need_ to be all bad after all. She opened her mouth to reply that she would _love_ to go hike Mission Peak, wherever that was, before she felt a sudden pull on her arm, yanking her off of the bench. She gave a yelp and struggled briefly until she realized it was Sands.

"Scout, do you know this guy?"

"Yes. She lives with _this guy_," Sands said, raising an eyebrow. "Scram. _Vamos_."

And without giving Mr. College Boy another thought, Sands yanked Aurelia back towards the condo entrance, awkwardly finding his way with his cane. Aurelia kept her mouth shut as they made their way to the elevator, until she noticed Sands feeling around to find the button for the twelfth floor.

"Let me get it –"

"You'll be lucky if I so much as let you sharpen a fucking _pencil_ for yourself after this," Sands growled in exasperation. Aurelia exhaled through her nostrils and yanked her arm away, crossing it with her other over her chest as they rode up the elevator, made their way down the hallway, and back into their condo. As the door closed behind Sands, Aurelia plopped down on the couch with a loud _thud_ and prepared for an earful. Sands, however, walked back over, pulling her back onto her feet and taking off his glasses so she was forced to look right at his blank glass eyes – he didn't know what he looked like, but he _knew_ it was disconcerting. The way her arm stiffened and she attempted to wriggle away verified that well enough.

"What are you _doing_?" Aurelia said shrilly, still unable to get out of his grasp. "Let go of me –"

"Let's get this straight, _Scout_," he said, using the nickname he'd overheard her give the boy outside. "I know this is the first time you've ever had a life, and you want to be _liberated_ and all of that bullshit. But you don't fucking _disappear_, or I'll –"

"You won't do anything, you're supposed to keep me safe."

"I can keep you _safely_ locked in a closet. I'd feed you and everything. _Try me_," he said, yanking her closer as he felt her slowly tugging her arm away. She had nerve, he thought. Little Barillo had some nerve, knowing that if something happened to her, he was screwed over. "I told you. Just because you're my job doesn't mean that I can't make your life hell if you do the same to mine –"

"I'm not making anyone's life hell, you – you shithead –" she said, now reaching up and using her other hand to try and pry his fingers' hold loose from their hold around her arm. Her attempts at fighting back, however, snapped Sands back to the reality that Aurelia was in no way the same kind of fighter that her older sister had been. She was practically a child. She tried to play tough, but she _panicked. _He suddenly broke into a fit of chuckles, letting go of her arm and raising his hands in a surrender-like gesture.

"You're a goddamn Chihuahua," he snorted, shaking his head. "You really want people to call youScout?"

"Sure. It's different."

"Are you pouting?"

"You tried to rip my arm off," Aurelia replied indignantly, backing away and sitting back down on the couch. "I'm going to tell Sorenson."

"And then I'm going to let her know you almost agreed to go hiking with a boy you'd known for ten minutes, all while evading your poor _blind_ bodyguard, and she'll put you in a safe house. And this liberated, _I-do-what-I-want_ streak is put to a sudden, bitter end. Does that sound fun to you?"

Aurelia's silence was answer enough, and she only sat to grouse for a few moments before getting up and storming into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

On some level, Aurelia knew what she wanted – the chance to live her life and actually make her own decisions. But she would never _say_ it was what she wanted, because it just seemed cliché. It seemed like something a Disney princess would say. She was almost 25, and by now, most people had moved out, lived on their worked a dozen odd jobs… and here she was, simply just being away from her entourage of bodyguards for the first time.

They weren't there to pick her up after she snuck out. Only Sands was here to do that. For the time being – however long that was – he was literally all she had, an she wasn't sure what to make of it. Laid on her side on the bed, staring out the window, she decided one thing - she really didn't want to be called Aurelia here, because this wasn't Aurelia's life. Aurelia didn't belong here.

Maybe Scout did.

Sands was probably right to be wary of her wandering off – she wouldn't have thought not to give her real name if there wasn't some merit to the idea that she wasn't exactly safe – but she still didn't consider it justification for practically dragging her back to the condo. And now that she'd had about an hour to mull things over and put together an argument that wouldn't make her sound like a Chihuahua, Sands was going to _get it_. She resolutely swung her legs over the side of the bed and got to her feet, pulling open the door to the living room.

She no longer felt quite as compelled to give him the chewing out she'd been planning in her head, however, when she looked into the living room and saw him sitting on the sofa with his shirt off, an unusual assortment of items spread on the coffee table in front of him, including a roll of Ace bandage and scissors. She looked at a slightly soiled bandage he had apparently taken off of his shoulder, and her eyes immediately drew to a healing wound across his shoulder, something that appeared like an incision from a surgery - even from across the room, she could see the pink, slightly puckered appearance of the newly forming skin. She'd known all along that he'd lost his eyes somehow, and that it was because of Ajedrez, but she was kept in the dark about most of what had happened, and she was thankful for such a circumstance.

It did not ease the strange, wringing sensation in her gut, however, seeing him attempting to use one hand to lay a new piece of gauze on the healing wound and wrap the bandage around it to keep it in place.

"You should probably let me help with that."

"Nope." Sands deadpanned. "I'm blind but I'm not useless. That's _your_ job," he retorted snidely. "I'm just gonna slather on some of this antiseptic cream shit and -"

"That's toothpaste, Sands. Sorenson left the tube you're looking for in the bathroom," Aurelia said hesitantly. He dropped it and held up his hands in concession, groaning in exasperation - did she always need to be persistent about everything? He heard her footsteps moving away from the living room momentarily, before coming back towards the couch where he was seated; it dipped only slightly with her weight as she sat next to him. He flinched as he felt something cold on his skin.

"_Warning_ next time, dollface," he said through gritted teeth as her warm hands gently, almost fearfully spreading the cream over the new skin with the pads of her fingers. It was strangely surprising that she was going to such efforts to _not_ cause him pain, he noted, when an hour ago she'd been screaming bloody murder over the fact that he'd just held her arm a little too tightly.

"I don't like _dollface_," she said in a voice that suggested that should have been the end of it - he couldn't blame her. He knew the girl was used to simply saying things and having them followed.

"So, you like _Scout_ better?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. She seemed to mull over the question as she laid the gauze evenly over the healing wound.

"Yeah. I think I do." Her voice seemed distracted, as though she was too intently focused on what she was doing to participate in banter, which Sands didn't find fun in the slightest. But he figured that was what artist-types like her did - get too focused on what they were doing to notice much of anything else. But, somewhere in the back of her mind, a small voice prodded – why did he care what she wanted to be called? "I wanna be _Scout_."

"Quit the runaway princess shenanigans, and I'll call you whatever the hell you want."

"Alright."

She - _Scout _- finally finished wrapping the Ace bandage, and Sands had to admit, it was a pretty perfect job. It better have been, he added mentally, considering she had been so damn meticulous about it.

"So." He said, reaching over and curling his fist into the material of his shirt before pulling it back on. "What's it like out there, since you've seen it?"

"It's nice. Different." from home Scout answered, inadvertently watching his hands as he buttoned his black collared shirt back up over his chest. "It's kind of… foggy. And grey, like steel. Hold on," she said, getting up from the sofa. Again, he heard her footsteps disappear in the direction of the bedroom and reappear in a hurry. "Give me your hand," she said, her voice filled with a child-like eagerness that Sands had to admit caught him _slightly_ off guard, for the sole reason that he had expected her to keep up the poor imprisoned princess schtick for the entirety of their time together. She reached out and grabbed his hand when he didn't comply immediately and he felt her place it on something - the drawing pad she'd been toting around ever since he had given it to her.

'There are trees," she said, tracing his hand over a line of shapes that sure enough, felt like wispy pine trees etched into the paper. "A _ton_ of them. More than I thought there would be in a big city. And the hills - and buildings all squeezed together…"

The more she described things as she moved his hand over them, the more the feeling of the shapes beneath his fingers made sense - he'd been able to tell when she'd drawn a big vase for him the first time, but now, , he finally seemed able to put together a picture in his mind of what she'd etched into the paper.

"And everything is kind of… muted. And cold. But I sort of like it."

She stopped and lingered with her hand on his, almost as though waiting for some kind of appraisal. Sands bristled slightly . What was he supposed to say to the kid?

"Sounds boring."

"_What_?" Scout said shrilly. "It's not boring! It's - it's _new_, and _amazing, _and I don't expect _you_ to understand, Mister hotshot C.I.A. agent," she retorted quickly. "Of course you don't think anything of it, why should you? You've probably seen the whole world by now."

Another tense silence. Scout's tough pretense dropped as she realized that if he _hadn't_ seen the world already, he certainly wouldn't be seeing any _more_ of it. She let out a few unintelligible syllables, stammering nervously. "I - I just - I didn't mean -"

"What?" Sands asked, irking an eyebrow again before letting out a loud guffaw. "Oh - oh, that's rich! You think you hurt my feelings? Scout, I've been told _much_ worse, and it's been intentional. I understand you've been locked in a tower or something and have a crippling lack of any and all social skills -"

"My social skills are _fine_!" Scout replied defensively. "I was just trying to be sensitive!"

"'Sensitive' is that little scene you had earlier. '_You nearly ripped my arm off_!" he mimicked in a whining tone. Scout clenched her teeth and let out a sharp hiss of an exhale, but suddenly - and rather unexpectedly – let out a sound that resembled, however grudgingly, laughter.

"This is much easier when you're a complete dick like that," she said with a strange sense of honesty. "Be careful. We almost had a _moment_ a second ago."

"Did we? Well, good lookin' out, then, Scout," he smirked. She laughed - actually _laughed_ - and inwardly made the decision that, no, Agent Sheldon Jeffrey Sands was _not_ holding her hostage after all.


	5. Chapter 5

"Senor Herrera - _Tomas_," Rodolfo Diaz said as he sat across the table from his old friend, who was busying himself with a large, pungent cigar. Diaz frowned, taking a sip from his glass of red wine when Herrera looked at him. "You understand, I started watching the girl as a favor to you. Now, I've put twenty years of my life into this work."

"And your work is well-appreciated, old friend," Herrera replied. He inclined his head - almost _bowed_ out of respect. He had known Diaz since they were young boys. They had been young and poor and ambitious together, and it had been intended for _now_ to be the time that all of that paid off. Diaz had been deeply entrenched in the Barillo cartel as the personal guard of Armando Barillo's precious _mestiza_ daughter - because they were preparing to one day join the family fortunes. Herrera regarded Diaz as an equal, even as a brother, for the years of friendship and loyal service. This was the only reason his candor was so well-received.

"I've brought her right to you, Tomas. I brought her to your doorstep and within a few hours, you've managed to lose her."

"_Patience_, friend," Herrera replied. "I am aware she is dear to you - but we mustn't make haste. We learn our lesson from Barillo. He was too rash, he flew too close to the sun. Besides…" he took another puff from his cigar. "The girl is far too valuable for them to allow any harm to come to her. We will simply allow the pieces to fall into place."

For Diaz, Aurelia had grown to be more than a piece that was meant to fall into place - she was, in his eyes, forever a dear child who wanted freedom more than anything. It pained him that he could not give it to her. He had no time to voice his displeasure, however, as the door to Tomas Herrera's parlor burst open, with Anselmo Herrera dragging in a man whose wrists and feet he had bound, shoving him towards his father's chair.

"He says he knows something about Aurelia," Anselmo said, his voice almost manic - Diaz inwardly admitted that he did not like this young man. Anselmo was Aurelia's age - he was handsome, intelligent, and charming if the mood struck him. What he lacked, because he had long been his father's second-in-command, even at such a young age, was Aurelia's pure heart.

"You are not one of _our_ men," the elder Herrera said, arching an eyebrow. Anselmo let go of the man and shoved him to the ground.

"How do we know that you are not _lying_?" Diaz said, rising from his seat and looming over the man. "What do you know about Aurelia?"

The man struggled, reaching into the pocket of his dirty jeans with difficulty as his hands had not been freed. He pulled out a piece of paper - a drawing of a car, in a style which Diaz recognized as Aurelia's own hand. He snatched it away and stared at it for a moment, then nodded in confirmation to both the elder and younger Herrera.

"She drove off with the American - the one in the dark glasses."

"I know the one," Tomas Herrera said, his gaze darkening slightly. "The _agent_."

"We ran them off the road. They crashed into the fence after we gave chase."

At this, Diaz suddenly, ferociously leapt forward and grabbed the man by the collar, practically hoisting him off of the ground with strength that belied the fact that he was an older man of fifty-two years. "Did you hurt the girl? Where is she?"

"Senor, we crashed - I do not remember anything. All I know is when I opened my eyes, I was bleeding, and the plane was already off of the ground."

Diaz dropped his hold on the man, allowing the hostage to fall to the ground as he straightened himself up, inhaling sharply through his nostrils. _The plane_. They had taken Aurelia back somewhere to America. Did this mean that she was free? Were they going to give her a new life? With trepidation, he looked back over his shoulder at his old friend.

"We have friends in _many_ places," Herrera said calmly. "We will find her in time. What is more concerning is that the _gringo_ knows who she is, which means our confidentiality is sadly compromised. And if this man was sent to fetch her as well, it means it is only a matter of time before our rivals join in the pursuit."

"Then we must be rid of _this one_." Diaz pulled a gun from its holster around his waist and glared darkly at the bound man in front of him. Unspoken but true, this was a matter of principle.

"This man is yours." Herrera said simply, gesturing to his son for them to leave Diaz alone with the hostage. Once the door had closed behind them, Diaz kicked the man sharply in the ribs as he tried to writhe out of his binds, desperate to escape.

"You must understand," Diaz said darkly, raising and cocking the gun in his hand. "You were dead the moment you said you intended to harm her."

* * *

Sands was admittedly impressed with Scout's willingness to stay put once she was finished feeling sorry for herself. Eventually, she seemed too tuckered out entirely to do much of anything, so she scurried off the bedroom. Sands knew her type – she would probably cry a little and sleep for fourteen hours straight, which was just fine by him. He managed to turn on the television and flip the channel to some Die Hard movie marathon, which gave him enough background noise to fall asleep to on the living room sofa. Being back in the States, as it turned out, was much too quiet after having been dropped off in bumfuck Mexico for so long.

He wasn't sure how long he dozed off for until, sometime later, he heard the television still on, but no longer on the familiar sound of Mel Gibson's voice and unrealistic explosions. It was the sound of something altogether more horrifying.

Chick flicks.

He groaned slightly and waved his hand in annoyance, which caught Scout's attention immediately. She was sitting in the adjacent arm chair, curled in a ball and sipping on a mug of instant coffee that tasted nothing like the _good_ stuff that she was used to.

"Sorry," she said in a voice that was clearly groggy and hoarse. "I couldn't sleep."

"Why? They leave a pea under your mattress, princess?"

There was no response, and Sands frowned. "You're gonna need to quit going silent on me like that. My automatic assumption is that if you're not complaining or otherwise making some sort of high-pitched noise expressing your displeasure, you're dead or kidnapped."

"Wishful thinking?" she inquired, raising an eyebrow. She was silent a little longer, and that was when Sands knew he was in for it. He knew he'd need to deal with this eventually. She was going to start talking about being scared, and her feelings, and missing home, and he was supposed to pretend to listen, which he had no intention of doing. "What happens if I get shot?"

Sands' eyebrows jolted in surprise, but he quickly smirked in recovery. "Then it'll hurt like a bitch. And there'll be blood. _Buckets_ –"

"I mean, if I get shot and _die_," she clarified – there was no quavering to her voice, no hesitation, just frank curiosity. A snort escaped Sands' nostrils, and he shook his head in disbelief.

"I don't think you realize the _eerie childlike wonder_ in your voice as you're asking me that question," he pointed out. "And they call _me_ a psycho."

"You probably are one," Scout deadpanned, swirling the contents of her mug and staring into it in thought. "I'm just curious. They could come for me any day, any time, right?"

Swiping a hand across his forehead, Sands shook his head. He'd read this girl's file a million times over. Never was there any indication that the gears in her head turned like this. Truth be told, if her files were anything to be believed, she was a delicate little flower who should have swooned and been inconsolable when she'd been dragged out of a burning building and kidnapped by a C.I.A. agent – and yet here she was, asking for details about what _worse_ could happen.

"Listen, Scout," Sands said, adjusting his positioning and resting his elbows on his knees, leaning towards where her voice was coming from. "You're not getting killed on my watch, because I am the _best_ at what I do," he said matter-of-factly."I will drive blind and with no potty breaks to Juarez or hell to retrieve you. And _then_, I'm going to beat the shit out of your for getting caught in the first place."

Silence again. Sands realized that maybe she had freaked out ever so slightly at his suggestion that he'd hurt her. "Not _really,_ alright?" he clarified. She still didn't respond. "Look, you're going to have to learn to put up with me talking a little shit with you –"

And finally, she made a noise – a tiny, muffled snort of a sound, like it was muffled behind her hand. "You thought I was crying, didn't you?" she asked impishly. Sands rolled his shoulders.

"You pulled a _prank_ on me. Cute," said with a sardonic smile. "You're a fucking five-year-old. This is what my career has been reduced to. Babysitting a grown woman who has the mind of a kindergartener."

"That was at least sixth grade," Scout retorted, her voice ringing with amusement at her stunt. "I'm going back to bed."

Sands wasn't sure how anything that had been said in the past few minutes had somehow made her feel any better. She couldn't just make his job easy – he'd assumed she'd be easy enough to read like a book, to keep track of, but instead, she seemed to catch him unaware more times than he found tasteful.

_She's growing on you. The spoiled, vapid, socially-stunted twit is growing on you._

_She's not a twit. _Sands hated when he was driven to the point of having these mental conversations with himself, but it was better than having them with anyone else. _She has a college degree, doesn't she?_

_In visual arts._

_Don't kid yourself, you've seen her file._

_Yes. Yes, I've seen her file, I know it like the back of my hand, but it wasn't exactly the most forthcoming information source, or else I'd still have eyes. She could be Albert Einstein for all I care. She doesn't care to come off as anything more. Hence, she's a twit._

_She's a twit you're having an entire conversation in your head about_.

"Fuck," Sands muttered to himself. He slumped back against the sofa and reached over, turning off the intolerable chick flick that Scout had left on the television. The little princess, he concluded, was more of a mindfuck than she was worth. And speaking of the princess…

Now that the television was turned off, he heard her voice coming from the bedroom, with another voice on speakerphone.

"Díaz? Díaz, it's me, I just wanted to –"

"_Aurelia_, do not call this number again. _Entiéndeme_ –"

"—see if you were okay…"

Sands burst clumsily into the bedroom and as Aurelia looked at the phone – Díaz probably had hung up on her, from the tone of his voice, and the defeated downturn of Scout's own tone. He strode over and awkwardly swung out until he managed to close his hand on the phone. It was _his_ phone – she must have swiped it, and he hadn't even noticed. Had he put it down somewhere? Had she somehow been able to get it out of his pocket?

"You called _Mexico_," he snarled in annoyance. "I'm pretty sure we had a conversation _very recently_ about you getting thrown into a closet if you pull stunts like this. Do you _not_ get that Díazis the one who brought you to Herrera in the first place? He. Served. You. Like a fucking hors d'oeuvre."

"I just needed to know that he's okay, that's all!" Scout said shrilly, still reeling from the fact that Díaz didn't seem concerned about her at all. "The man is practically my father—"

"Oh! He's _practically_ the cartel boss who is directly responsible from my eyes getting plucked out of my fucking skull! Well, that changes everything, invite him over for a cup of coffee!"

* * *

"Deputy Director Stalwart – you wanted to see me?"

Agent Fiona Sorenson didn't like being called from her routine to speak with Stalwart in his office, not because the man was inappropriate or harassing in any way, but because the older man, who sorely outranked her, technically, had never been good at staying in his own lane. As Deputy Director of the National Clandestine Service, Sorenson didn't feel his assignments should intersect with hers as much as he made them. He was ambitious, and because Sorenson was the exact same way, it made for a very difficult work partnership.

"Sorenson," he said with a patronizing gesture for her to take a seat across from his desk – she did not accept. "Are Sands and the Barillo girl settled in?"

Sorenson hesitated. He wanted to know about _this _case? "Sir, with all due respect –"

"You want to know why I think it's any of my business?" Stalwart said with a knowing smile. He leaned forward, folding his hands on the desk in front of him. "I have an interest in how this debacle clears up, because Herrera has his hands in _quite_ a few cookie jars this side of the border, and I have men in the trenches, so to speak. Herrera has an extensive portfolio of investments, which my men are keeping an eye on."

"I see."

"I'll skip to the point," Stalwart continued. "I'm not confident in your team's ability to take him down at home – but I'm confident in _my_ ability to hit him where it hurts."

"With a bullet to the temporal lobe?"

"No. Right in the Cayman Islands bank account," he replied condescendingly. "I'm not sure about _your_ protocols, but I run a clean operation on my end."

Sorenson didn't realize how tightly her jaw was clenched just listening to this man. He was so _condescending_, because he sat behind a desk in a suit and ordered pawns around from a safe distance. He thought he was _better_ than her, because of his position in the organization, because of a damned piece of anatomy dangling between his legs.

"Is that _all_?" Sorenson asked in annoyance.

"Just wanted to let you know," Stalwart said, an implicit challenge lingering in his voice. "If we're both focusing on taking him down, then we're going to be… a _team_ of sorts."

He grinned toothily, and Sorenson forced a smile back before turning on her heel to leave.

"One more thing!" Stalwart called out before Sorenson had a chance to actually leave. "I'm going to need to borrow Sands for a bit."

"Agent Sands _has_ an assignment," she said coldly, her eyes glinting as she whirled around. Speaking to her the way he did was one thing, but when Stalwart actually made moves to take away what little Sorenson had at her disposal, that was another battle entirely. Sorenson felt her blood boil even more when Stalwart scoffed, laughing openly at her.

"I've been briefed. I hardly consider an attractive twenty-four-year-old piece of ass a _hassle_ of an assignment, especially for Sands," he smirked before standing up and walking across the room to stand in from of Fiona Sorenson, who drew herself up to her full height challengingly. "You're in such a hurry to play with the big boys, Sorenson. You might get sloppy," Stalwart said, garnering a glare of disgust. He smirked, shaking his head dismissively. "Haste makes waste."


	6. Chapter 6

"_Sands_."

"Fucking hell, Sorenson, if you sneak up on me like that again I am going to blow your damn brains out – and not in the way that you're probably _thinking_."

Sands had, admittedly, been startled when Sorenson, who held the master key to their unit, came inside unannounced and snuck up on him as he watched – no – _listened to_ the television on the couch. "Princess Peach is in the shower, if you came to check on her."

"Will she be long?"

"She hasn't started into her rendition of 'No Diggity' yet, she's still on 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.' – they kept her _very_ sheltered, didn't they? All the music she knows is decades old –"

"I'll take that as a 'yes'." Sorenson interrupted pointedly, taking a seat across from Sands, who stretched his arms and interlocked his fingers, lounging backwards and propping up his feet on the coffee table. "Is she still in the dark?"

"Well, I assume she turns the light on when she's in there, but I'm by no means the authority on that."

"Is she in the dark about her _situation_?"

Sands raised his hands defensively at the sharp tone in Sorenson's voice - he'd always know that she was never the type to take a joke, but as of late, she'd become even _more_ frigid. "I haven't said a word to her, but you might want to have a talk with her about the ground rules."

"If she freaks out and runs away home like a scared puppy, it's _your_ head, Sands," she continued, not even acknowledging the latter portion of his response. "You have _one_ job. You have to keep a naive little ingenue from getting spooked, running off, and getting kidnapped, because if they get their hands on her, _three years_ of operations in Mexico trying to dismantle those fucking cartels is going down the drain, because we are going to be facing down a _chimera_ of a cartel, and you are going to be locked up for _life_ for the expenses you racked up during your little escapades."

"That all came out a little fast, d'you want to repeat any of it?" Sands asked calmly. "I am fully aware, _Agent Sorenson_, that Little Miss Sunshine is a very important piece of the puzzle -"

"Then _act_ like it."

"I'm flattered," Sands began, raising his index finger in interruption, because interruption was to only way to get a word in edgewise with Fiona Sorenson. "That you came all the way out here because you were so concerned that this babysitting gig might overwhelm me -"

"I didn't come here just to make small-talk with you, Sands," she said, reaching into her large bag and pulling out a manila folder. "Turns out, Herrera has a few choice contacts he's made stateside as well, and Stalwart is gunning for a bonus - you're in the area, hence, the gig is yours."

"Ah, right. Needs his Viagra money to keep up with that trophy wife of his. Polish, right?"

"Norwegian."

"That was my next guess."

"_Anyway_," Sorenson said shortly. "I brought you this as a present. It's all Stalwart has on a man named Victor Hackenborough."

"Gesundheit."

"Stalwart is interested in Hackenborough," Sorenson continued over Sands' attempts at humor, "because Hackenborough is one who notarized some of Herrera's potential contracts here in good ol' San Fran. They are the _only_ things that Hackenborough has notarized."

"So, does Stalwart want Mr. Hackenborough in an interrogation room or a body bag?" Sands asked, raising an eyebrow, his voice taking on a very different edge upon comprehending the fact that he was actually getting an _assignment_, however small. Sorenson crossed her arms and considered the question for a moment before relaying Stalwart's answer.

"It's a judgment call."

* * *

"I don't get it," Scout said, towel-drying her hair and squinting in suspicion at Sands. "They want me to do what?"

"You're going out to do the job for me that you agreed to, dollface. You take your little sketchpad and scout the area for me. I need to know that street like the back of my hand - bus stops, stop signs, broken down cars, boarded windows -"

"But Sorenson left us a _car_, Sands," Scout said, brandishing the keys that he had tossed her way the instant he had heard her leave the bedroom and enter the living room, with Sorenson already gone. "Why don't I just drive you there?"

"Because we can't have you hanging around and waiting for me. It's too risky," Sands said, wishing he still had the ability to roll his own eyes from behind his dark shades. "I need to get there on my own, make it seem like I'm passing through all casual-like, do whatever needs doing, and at the appointed time, you drive up and we make our getaway."

Scout rolled her eyes. It made sense, of course, but it all just seemed like such a tedious mess - such a hassle. Did they really just rope unsuspecting bystanders into messes like this?

She knew, of course, that as much as she thought this was completely unnecessary, she had agreed to it. Legally, she was married to Sheldon Sands, and they would be able to track her down, if she even managed to find a place to go at all. So, she obliged, picking up the sketch pad and pencils, and driving the dark blue Saab hatchback to a spot about a block or two away from the appointed location: the corner of Kirkham and Lurline.

Kirkham was a long street that intersected with one of the busiest streets in the city - Nineteenth Avenue - but wasn't very busy in and of itself. It was a spattering of homes with small stores and apartment buildings with hardly any space between them. She made note of the nearest bus stop, which busses stopped there, and how many people were waiting. Most of the homes were occupied by old Chinese families who seemed more interested in their own comings and goings than those of anyone else. Hackenborough lived in the second house on the left - it was bright blue, but she knew that particular detail would be of no help to Sands. She drew in the way the sidewalk jutted unevenly in front of the house, the large cracks.

Scout felt strangely insecure when she had to bring the sketchpad back to Sands for his appraisal - he ran his fingers over it and directed her to 'quit her mouse-squeaking' while he did. Scout attempted to comply for a short while but eventually felt a little overwhelmed by the silence as they were both sitting on the couch.

"How do you know that I'm going to need to show up at 2:40?" she asked stubbornly. "I still think it would make more sense if I waited there -"

"I've been in this line of work long enough to give you a time estimate, sugar," he replied, nonchalantly flopping the sketchpad down on the coffee table. "The drawing's good. I'll be able to get around, no problem."

"This is crazy."

"This is work." Sands corrected, standing up and grudgingly reaching out for the cane he was growing accustomed to using. "You know, the thing that you've never done in your entire life."

And with the satisfaction of knowing that Scout's lips had probably puckered into scowl, he made his way out of the apartment.

Scout wasn't sure why she felt concerned at all for what Sands was doing on this assignment - hadn't she wished a few times that he would just disappear? That all of this would disappear and she could just go back to normal? Maybe he had been right, she mused, when he had joked about Stockholm Syndrome setting in. Whatever the case, she found herself dutifully watching the clock, twirling the car keys around her finger.

_You don't have to show up, you know._ She thought to herself when the two o'clock hour rolled around. _You could just up and disappear, swap that Saab for something shinier - Sands taught you how to steal a car._

And the memory of how he'd used a flathead screwdriver at Sands' instruction to steal the old stationwagon in Mexico sparked a series of other memories - specifically, the ones in which he saved her life. She groaned a little and slumped back against the couch. She had to leave in fifteen minutes to ensure she arrived at Kirkham and Lurline not too early and not too late. She had gone from being a victim to an accomplice to whatever was going on, whether she liked it or not. She took the opportunity to go through the closet and find a better jacket from the clothes Sorenson had left for her, settling on a dark green wool coat that she pulled on over her sweater.

Maybe she would leave a little early, to be on the safe side.

This turned out to be a good plan, as the travel time Sands had calculated for her before he left failed to take into consideration the fact that in the big city, traffic jams happened at the drop of a dime. She managed to make it to the old blue house on Kirkham on time, and the garage door opened the instant she pulled up. Following instinct, she pulled into the garage, and the door immediately closed behind her - Sands had timed all of this into a single, well-oiled machine. Once the garage door was completely closed, she saw the door that led from the garage to the house open slightly - Sands' voice, sounding much deeper and more serious, coursed through the gap in the doorway.

"Alright, dollface. If you don't want to see anything that'll scar you for life, this is your one chance to cover your eyes. Pop the trunk."

Instinctively, she did as she was told, pulling the small lever to release the trunk and clenching her eyes shut, leaning her forehead against the steering wheel. She heard noises that tempted her to look up - the sound of dragging and thuds - but she refused to lift her head until finally, she felt the car sink a little with the weight of something heavy being rolled into the trunk.

"Holy fucking shit," she muttered, her eyes widening in realization as Sands clambered into the passenger seat. "There is a dead body in the trunk."

"Hopefully."

"What?"

"Well, I would _hope_ he was dead, because I imagine his current position would be rather uncomfortable," Sands chuckled, eliciting only a groan from Scout, whose hands gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles went white.

"What are we going to do with him?" Scout asked in a scandalized voice, lashing out in panic and smacking Sands on the chest as he buckled his seatbelt, also dropping a large black leather bag on the floor of the car that seemed fairly full. "We can't just leave a body in the trunk! This isn't Mexico! What are we supposed to do with this thing?"

"I found our solution on the news this morning," Sands smirked haughtily, lacing his fingers behind his head. There's an old warehouse set to be demolished this evening in a place called Hunter's Point. We're going to drive there, deposit the motherlode in said factory, and Mr. Hackenborough will be buried in the rubble."

"_Okay_." Scout said, agreeing so quickly that even Sands seemed to be surprised as he turned his head in her direction. She started the car while Sands opened the garage door, and she pulled out into the street, attempting to drive as normally as possible without any indication that she was carrying a dead person in the trunk. "What the hell happened?" she snapped, her eyes glued to the road as if afraid to look into her mirrors and see the dead man peeking out. "I thought you were just supposed to be getting information?"

"What do you think is in the bag, new linens?" Sands said, kicking the leather bag at his feet. "What _happened_ is that Mr. Hackenborough was involved in some very dirty dealings with Tomas Herrera and knew right away he was found out when I showed up to ask him a few questions. He drew first, I shot first, he fell first."

This was too much. This was _crazy_, Scout thought to herself. She didn't like driving the getaway car, and she didn't like this place called Hunter's Point, where she felt like she could be shot at any moment. She managed to find the warehouse Sands was talking about.

"Just pull up behind the building. They'll think I'm selling you crack, or turning you out - they won't bother us -"

"You're going to let them think I'm a _hooker_?!"

"You don't even know them, so does it matter? Just pull up on the far side of the building. There should be an alley, a backroad, anything."

Scout gave the wheel a sharp turn in annoyance and once they were safely behind the building away from prying eyes, she brought the car to an abrupt halt. Sands reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of latex gloves, holding them in Scout's direction.

"Now, put these on and help me drag him into the ground floor -"

"What?!"

"He's wrapped in a tarp, there won't be a scent to wash off or anything!"

"Don't dead people evacuate their - their _bowels_ -"

"Did you think the tarp was just the latest in post-mortem fashion trends?"

"No. I am not picking up a dead body. No way."

"Suit yourself, princess," he said dismissively, getting out of the car. Scout released the door to the trunk and felt it the instant the weight of Mr. Hackenborough's body tumbled to the ground. Sands, however, didn't seem able to move the body as quickly over the ground. He'd have to drag it. There'd be a trail…

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Scout said shakily, throwing her hands up in resignation and climbing out of the car and taking the over end of the tarp - he had at least been truthful in saying that she couldn't _see_ the body. Despite the fact that she wasn't able to lift much, the meager amount of help she provided seemed to speed the process considerably, and once they had left the tarp in a corner of the dark building, they hurried out.

The drive back home was silent - while Sands was more than used to doing whatever was necessary to finish a job, he was at least able to acknowledge the fact that Scout - _Aurelia Barillo _- did not make a daily habit of disposing of dead bodies, and therefore had quite a bit to process. He managed to hold back any snide comments that happened to run through his head, especially those that involved pointing out how strong she was for her size. They arrived at the apartment and she immediately retreated into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

_Fuck. She's spooked._ Sands mentally kicked himself for the fact that now, he'd need to watch her twice as closely, because she was more likely now than ever before to run off and do something stupid. He heard the shower turn on, and he grimaced - she felt guilty. She felt implicated in the murder, and she was.

The shower remained on for over an hour - that, Sands half-jokingly thought to himself, either had to be some major guilt or an episode of pants-crapping, a comment which he would keep tucked away just in case. He was just glad he wasn't paying the water bill. There was silence until finally, hours later, after Sands had admittedly already dozed off for a short while, the door hinge to the bedroom squeaked slightly.

"I want to go out." Scout said. The click-clack of her footsteps indicated that she was wearing heels - why had Sorenson given her _those_? When women put on heels and talked about going out, there was a relatively short list of ways to interpret that.

"Nope. Absolutely not," Sands said, standing up and raising his eyebrows so that they were more visible over his shades. "You're not going to wander off alone and get drunk out there -"

"Then you're going to come with me, _bodyguard_," she said stubbornly. "The bar is just a nice long walk from here, and I need to get fucking plastered so I don't spend the night obsessing over the fact that I just helped you dump a body."

There was, in Sands' mind, some merit to her idea. If this meant drinks for him and preventing her from running off, then it hardly mattered. Besides - she had just helped him cover up a murder with relatively little complaint and deserved a night on a shorter leash. He nodded toward the door. He could more than keep up with a twenty-five-year-old who had never done anything worse than sneak out of her mansion and throw back a couple Jagerbombs before her bodyguard brought her back home.

* * *

"I wanna _dance_! I don't want to just sit here!"

Sands had to admit, he hadn't thought Scout's voice was at all grating - it was almost a little hoarse-sounding, like a smoker's voice. He might have even classified her as easy on the ears, until he heard what she sounded like when she was drunk. She sounded more shrill, more whiny, more like the little rich girl he expected her to be. He hated it.

"You are not going to go _dance_, because any one of these little frat boys could have been paid off to slip you a roofie, and it's too hard to chase you around a dance floor - considering the fact that I'm, you know. Irresistible. I'd need to beat the drunk college girls off with a stick while you're off getting kidnapped," Sands said, calmly taking a swig from his tequila and lime. "They could be packing a chloroform rag -"

"Then _you_ dance with me!" she said with a giggle - Sands honestly could not stand giggling either. He grimaced when she grabbed his hand and pulled him from his stool at the bar - she had strangely enough led him by clinging onto his arm tonight on the walk down the busy street to the bar, rather than letting him bring his cane. "No one will even notice, girls run off with creepy older men all the time -"

"Creepy older men," Sands said with a smirk, allowing himself to be dragged out, on the off chance that drunk Scout dancing meant drunk Scout not talking anymore. What he didn't expect, however, was that the twenty-five year old young woman in front of him who, despite having never actually seen her, he knew to be extremely pretty, began hooting and swinging her hips vigorously, her body brushing against his.

Since going blind, Sands hadn't _felt_ the sensation of a woman pressed against him that way, save for Ajedrez, right before he shot her. This was definitely not that. He was a little hazy, having tried to drown out the annoying sound of Scout's drunken ramblings with drinks of his own, and suddenly, the internal arguments for why letting her get this close was a bad idea became a jumbled mess in his head. Before he realized what he was doing, his hands were on her hips, roving over the smooth fabric of her dress, his fingertips digging slightly in around her hipbones. The sensation of her soft curves under his palms, owed perhaps to the fact that he was so much more tactile since losing his sight, was maddening.

"Scout, you better quit this," he chuckled huskily into her ear. "Because you're making me very strongly consider taking you back to the apartment and doing _ungodly_ things to you." He smirked, thinking he would spook her out of being such a minx, that she would learn a lesson, but he was taken aback by the fact that instead, he felt her spin around and rest her arms on his shoulders, bringing her mouth right next to his ear and breathily whispering two words that would prove to be the last straw for Sands' record-breaking run at celibacy since Mexico.

"..._you offering?_"


	7. Chapter 7

Sheldon Sands was, for the first time, thankful for not having eyes. His head was already pounding painfully the instant he stirred, and if he was able to see - if he still had a pair of functioning eyes and not these creepy glass ones - he was sure the light would be excruciatingly painful.

Small blessings, indeed.

Instead, the first thing he noticed was the cold - he was in nothing but boxers, laying in bed. He _never_ slept in the bed. It had become an unspoken rule in the week they had spent in this apartment that the bed was Scout's territory, and the sofa bed in the living room was his. The fact that he was here, in this state, pointed towards one conclusion.

"_Fuck_."

He had screwed his assignment. He had actually _screwed_ his assignment. The night came back to him in limited snapshots, including one particular snapshot in which his assignment happened to do a little thing with her tongue that was admittedly quite nice -

But that was beside the point.

"Scout." he groaned, swinging his arm out until it hit the bedside table with a thud - he heard his shades rattle against what was probably a glass of water, and he put them on his face clumsily. "_Scout_."

It was then that another one of his senses - his sense of smell - kicked in, and what he smelled was admittedly nice. Very nice. His brow furrowed, and he got up from the bed without bothering to scrounge around for more clothes and groped his way along the wall to the door to the living room.

"Mornin' husband."

Scout's voice - the sober version - greeted him as soon as he emerged, and he quickly identified the scent he had picked up as breakfast. French toast and bacon. It was flattering, of course, that after one night with him she was so compelled to play house, but the last thing he needed was a twenty-whatever-year-old girl pining after him, especially if said twenty-whatever-year-old was his assignment and very frequently in closed quarters with him.

"Okay, dollface, listen," he said, holding his hands up placatingly and not moving any further across the room. "I don't know what's running through your head right now, but let's be very clear that what happened last night -"

Sands' explanation was interrupted by the sound of shrill, abrupt laughter from the direction of the kitchen. Grimacing slightly, he took a few steps forward.

"I'm not twelve, I know a hook-up when I have one," Scout said with a surprising lilt of smugness in her voice. There was the sound of metal clinking against a plate - she was sliding another slice of French toast onto the pile. "I just figured that since we're stuck in the same apartment and there will be no walk of shame for either of us, I should be polite and make enough for two because I am starved."

Sands smirked and moved over to sit on the sofa. The assurance that he hadn't desecrated some poor little angel spared him an inconvenient round of guilt and damage control - but it came as a shock, nonetheless, that she wasn't the shrinking violet he had expected.

But coming from Ajedrez's sister, a little voice in the back of his mind pointed out, he should have known not to trust his expectations.

"Let's just be practical," Scout said, her voice suddenly close by. He heard the plate clink against the coffee table in front of him, and the small shift in the sofa cushion that meant she was sitting down. "Shit happens, right? Living together and being forced to be around each other constantly just increases the likelihood. If I'm stuck in here with you -"

"If you're stuck with me, you're amiable to the occasional whoopsie to pass the time," Sands finished for her. "You… are definitely more psycho than I expected. It's surprisingly pleasant," he smirked. "You do remember the part of yesterday where you helped me drive a dead body across town, drag it into a warehouse, and cover up a crime. And your first reaction was, 'Yes. Yes, this is exactly the kind of guy I'd like to get nasty with'. And then, you cook me breakfast."

"Actually, I cooked _me_ breakfast," Scout replied matter-of-factly. "I just made enough for you too because I wasn't raised in the Dark Ages. I have manners."

"You sure had manners last night."

"Dick."

It was relief, Sands concluded, that he no longer had to handle his _assignment _with kid gloves, but at the same time, he realized that it also sucked the challenge out of it altogether. She was, for someone who had been practically confined to a tower like Rapunzel for most of her life, disgustingly well-adjusted and aware.

"You were expecting me to be some kind of a nun? I went to _college_. I met people, I did stuff. It's what you do when they lock you up in a cage and you see an out." Scout chuckled in between bites of food, noting the expression on Sands face. "Did the CIA really think that little of me? That I'd be completely oblivious and crumple into an endless pile of - of tears and Kleenex?"

"Nah. They never read into your files much - only I did."

"Oh. So only _you_ expected me to be completely oblivious and crumple into an endless pile of tears and Kleenex."

"Pretty much."

She scoffed a little, but made no further comment or noise at all, except for the faint sound of chewing as she went along her merry way eating her breakfast. Sands groped around for a little for a fork and grudgingly took a bite - as it turned out, she was capable of making something edible as well. He took another bite.

"Aren't you glad you married me?" she asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm. Sands took another bite of the French toast and chewed through his own reply. "Made an honest woman outta -"

"You," he said, gently waving the fork in her direction, "should still be giggling over bridal magazines and planning your Barbie dream wedding. Why are you such a cynic, anyway?"

"We're getting to know each other now? This _is_ getting serious."

"Serious question."

There was a pause, and the clink of Scout putting her plate down - Sands followed suit, intrigued by the apparent striking of a nerve. "What do you expect? My mother was the _querida_ -" the way her voice lilted over the single word in Spanish lent a strange deepness to her voice that made her sound more like someone Sands would have preferred she did not sound like. "My father's wife had her killed. I know the story – and the moral is, marriage is too temporary and too messy to be taken seriously," she concluded dismissively.

"A valid point."

"Mhm." Scout muttered. "Listen, this is getting weird. We screwed, we're eating breakfast, we're talking personal - this is getting a little too rom-com for me," she chuckled. 'So how about we quit the small-talk before we start naming kids and picking out china?"

"It's my job to get into your head, sugar," Sands shrugged. "Getting into your pants wasn't part of the plan, but if you've got no delusions about it, then everything's smooth sailing."

* * *

It was strange that the sheer irresponsibility of Scout's actions - hooking up with Sands, in particular - was an indicator that she deserved a little bit more of his trust, but in his mind, the utter nonchalance with which she faced the situation seemed reason enough to relax a little bit. He was still recovering from having his eyes gouged out, and he deserved the damn vacation anyway. He had even trusted her to the point of letting her walk to the store alone because they were out of milk, with confidence she would make it back without getting herself kidnapped. As it turned out, even sooner than expected, Sands heard the door creak open.

"Speed walk all the way home, Scout? Didn't think you'd miss me that much -"

"I'm going to overlook the fact that you are not watching over your charge despite her being your only assignment," came Fiona Sorenson's harsh tones, approaching Sands from behind as he sat on the sofa. "We've gone through everything you retrieved from Hackenborough's home and you, Agent Sands, have a new assignment straight from Deputy Director Stalwart."

"Sorenson? That you?" Scout now peered through the door with her arms laden with grocery bags, moving over to stand near Sands and Sorenson, crossing her arms curiously. "What's going on?"

"I'll get to you next," Sorenson said shortly. "What we _found_ is that Tomas Herrera has been pumping money into a corporation based here in San Francisco - Rhomberg Technological Research Incorporated, owned by a mister Estanislaus Cabral. Herrera provided the startup funding for Cabral, and in return, Cabral launders Herrera's funds and supplies him with a considerable share of profits. Hackenborough was their private notary."

"And Stalwart cares about this because -"

"Because Stalwart has his eyes on the biggest cash cow he can get, and right now, that happens to be Rhomberg Incorporated," Sorenson said. "If he's able to make _that_ bust, we're rid of Herrera too."

"So, I need to get rid of this Cabral -"

"No." Sorenson interrupted. Scout, meanwhile, had meandered into the kitchen and reached into a can of Pringles, crunching loudly and causing Sands to turn in her direction - she muttered an apology but continued chewing nonetheless. "Stalwart wants you _inside_. You will be making contacts, acting as an informant -"

"Doing what? I can hardly pass as a researcher with a very obvious _handicap_ -"

"Thank God for the Americans with Disabilities Act," Sorenson replied, and the tone of her voice made it obvious to even Sands that she was smirking. This was not a good sign. "There's an opening for Cabral's personal secretary -"

"Wow. _Kinky_." Scout let out a sudden yelp of laughter and slapped her hand onto the kitchen counter. "He's gonna be a _secretary_! Oh god, this is rich. This is _too_ -"

"Don't think that this means you get to run off willy-nilly," Sorenson said, her tone becoming sharp with Scout rather than sisterly for the first time. She brandished a manila folder and walked over to the younger girl, placing it down on the counter in front of her. "This file is yours. Sands neglected to mention what you were studying in college -"

"Visual arts."

"You were _one_ course short of your degree in international business." she said calmly. "That means you could be useful to us, and we are currently investing a crap ton of money into keeping you safe. Sands is no business professional, but apparently, you have a working knowledge of things. You might just be slightly rusty."

"So?"

"So you," Sorenson said, opening the folder and revealing a stack of printouts, "are going back to school."

"What?!" Scout hissed, swiping the papers up and staring intently at them - now, it was Sands who was smirking at the young woman's reaction. "This is insane. You can't coerce me into - into going back to school -"

"It's being put on the C.I.A.'s tab as a part of maintaining your cover - and despite my desire to keep you in the dark, you are unfortunately _very_ involved in this now. You're a smart girl. You know what happens when you get _involved_ and try to back out -"

"Sorenson," Sands snapped, his tone suddenly taking on an air of authority. He got to his feet and walked over to the kitchen area without so much as bumping a shin. "Do you think it's in your best interests to _threaten_ the girl, considering the fact that the objective is not to scare her off?"

The older woman recoiled slightly at the realization that Sands, whether he realized it or not, had become strangely protective over the girl. If she didn't know him better, she would have nearly surmised that he even cared for her, in whatever strange way he might have been capable of. She cleared her throat and looked back at Scout.

"Aurelia," she said sternly. "As difficult as it is to understand, we can only protect you if it is to _our_ benefit, and you need our protection. Badly. Almost as badly as we need information on Rhomberg. So, you will _comply_, and things will continue as I have outlined, is that understood?"

Scout glared, crossing her arms over herself, and nodded. She had thought she was done being forced into things. She could not have been more wrong. Satisfied that her job of briefing both Sands _and_ Scout had been done adequately, she exited, leaving the pair standing across from each other at the kitchen counter.

"You _neglected to mention_?" Scout hissed darkly. "So you knew all this about me? About – about my classes, and me changing my major –"

"Don't act surprised. I told you the night met you, I know everything there is to know about you - except for _why_." Sands said, raising his eyebrows questioningly. "You were one class short, and you switched to _visual arts_ -"

"It's not any of your business, but I just _changed my mind_," Scout retorted indignantly. "I thought it sounded good, being able to travel and work all over the world, until I realized Papa and Diaz would never allow it. I got over it. End of story."

"So it's a sore spot."

"It's something I have no interest in going back to, but have no choice in doing so," she said sourly. "But the plus side is - I'm not a _secretary_, at least."

"You can just shut right up," Sands half-smirked through his annoyance. If Scout had been what he'd expected her to be, this entire experience would have been intolerable. He would have killed someone by now.

Scratch that. He had already killed someone.

He would have killed someone _undeserving_.

The fact that he could get by without coddling Scout was perhaps the only thing which allowed him to keep in mind that his freedom depended on this last assignment going off without a hitch - that his contribution in bringing down Herrera was the only way to cover the tab he had racked up in Mexico, and Aurelia Barillo - _Scout_ - was his meal ticket.

Now, he was going to be a secretary. He'd shed pints of blood - some of which was his own - for the C.I.A. He was their best guy. And now, he was going to be undercover behind a desk. Karma, it turned out, certainly was a bitch.

"Hey, Sands."

He cocked his head slightly to one side when Scout called for his attention. "If I finish out this last class and we get out of this mess alive…"

"Are you free to go off and use your shiny new college degree and travel the world and backpack through Europe and all that jazz?" he finished with a smirk. "Sugar, once they let you go, you can do all that. All you need to do is help me get this job done."

"And what about you?"

"What?" he shrugged. "When this is over, I go my way and you go yours. You get me my freedom, I get you yours."

Why? A little voice in the back of his mind prodded. Why would it matter to her what happened to him once all of this was over? Why was she agreeing to all of this in the first place?

"But what are you gonna do? This is your last assignment before you're released from the C.I.A., Sorenson says so all the time -"

"Don't matter to you," Sands smirked. "Just rest assured, I'll be out of your hair. Forever."

Scout went silent - she wasn't sure if the statement made her happy. Days ago, it would have. When exactly it crossed into a grey area, not even she could tell.

* * *

_"I'm beginning to think you don't want Aurelia to be found, Diaz."_

Anselmo Herrera did not share his father's fondness for Cristobal Diaz, and saw in a heartbeat that the older man forced himself to express any sense of urgency when it came to tracking down Aurelia Barillo. Aurelia _needed_ to be found, and Anselmo felt that way more strongly than anyone. Diaz, however, simply took another sip from his wine glass.

Truth be told, a part of him hoped that the _gringo _would indeed be able to keep Aurelia hidden away. A part of him could not stand to hand Aurelia over as planned for the purposes Tomas Herrera intended. In the beginning, Aurelia Barillo had just been an assignment - but that had been years ago. Seventeen years ago. Her round, mischievous brown eyes that twinkled with a love for trouble did not take long to grow on him - it did not take long for the thought of handing her over to feel like sacrificing his _own_ child.

Anselmo chuckled at Diaz's silence, shaking his head and drinking from his own glass. "You're weak. But - most people are. Most people are weak and selfish," he shrugged noncommittally. "Aurelia will be well taken care of with us, Diaz."

Cristobal Diaz, however, was not convinced. He hoped that the gringo - the Blind Gunslinger, some called him - was as good of an agent as he was purported to be.


End file.
